27 July 2016

Click on the above image to read the full findings

The full findings of SCoJeC’s study of What’s Changed about Being Jewish in Scotland, which we carried out in 2015, have now been published.

The catalyst for this was the huge spike in antisemitic incidents in August 2014, when SCoJeC received almost as many reports in a single month as in the whole of the previous year. So many Jewish people told us that they were feeling uncomfortable and anxious and even afraid to go about their day-to-day activities, that the Scottish Government was concerned enough to fund a further study of how the experience of Being Jewish in Scotland had changed since our original study in 2012.

Like that study, this new report provides a comprehensive overview of what Jewish people in Scotland are thinking, feeling, and experiencing. It is based on responses from a significant cross-section of the Jewish population of Scotland, spread across the entire country from the Borders to the Shetlands, from members of the larger Jewish communities in Glasgow and Edinburgh, the smaller ones in Dundee and Aberdeen, and also from Jewish people who live very many miles from the any Jewish facilities. We heard from Jewish people whose families had lived in Scotland for generations, and people who had very recently arrived in Scotland from other parts of the world. We heard from members of the Orthodox, Reform, and Liberal Jewish communities, as well as from people with no connection to formal Judaism, from people who had no interest in the Jewish religion or Jewish ritual, but who, in a wide variety of ways, felt connected to Jewish culture or for whom particular foods or melodies evoked their childhoods, as well as from people who only found out they were Jewish as adults.

As in our previous study, we were careful not to ask leading questions. First we asked people what they feel is good about being Jewish in Scotland, and only then what is not so good. We also asked how open they are about being Jewish, whether they had ever been treated differently because of their Jewishness, and whether they felt that there was anything that the Scottish Government, the Jewish Community, or others could do to address their concerns. Unfortunately, in stark contrast to 2012, most people did not tell us they feel that Scotland is a good place to live. On the contrary, more than one in ten respondents said that they could think of nothing good about being Jewish in Scotland, and without being prompted others said they had begun to think about leaving Scotland, one in six talked about keeping their identity hidden, and one in three talked about a heightened level of anxiety, discomfort, or vulnerability.

Because of the context of many of the incidents in 2014, we added questions to explore further what we had already been told in 2012 about how events in the Middle East affect Jewish people's experience in Scotland, and about their experience of hate crime.  We were disturbed by the results, with four our of five respondents saying that the events in the Middle East had negatively affected how they are treated as Jews in Scotland.

That said, we were also gratified by the response of the Scottish Government. The First Minister agreed to address a public meeting in the Community, and was outspoken that “There is nothing that happens in Israel or Palestine that can be justification for antisemitism or any racial or religious hatred”, and has since reiterated publicly that “I don’t want to be the First Minister, or even live in, a country where Jewish people want to leave or hide their identity.” The Justice Secretary, the Lord Advocate, and the Chief Constable have all also sought to engage with the Jewish Community and to reassure us that Scotland has zero tolerance of all forms of hatred, racism, and antisemitism.

Commenting on the findings of the new report Cabinet Secretary for Communities, Social Security and Equalities Angela Constance said:

SCoJeC Director, Ephraim Borowski, commented:

The report has also been the subject of a Motion in the Scottish Parliament which expresses concern at the findings and welcomes the response of the Scottish Government. The motion was tabled by Michael Russell MSP, and reads in full: